Tag Archives: TWIEtR

The many ways technology is used to communicate with parents (yet no one way is the best). Online education industry expected to grow 8x in India. And “clickers” may not help concepts mentally click. All this week in edtech reports.

These summaries of new studies, surveys, and research (plus the occasional commentary and analysis) are based on snippets from Twitter shared by @FrankCatalano. Feel free to follow.

West Corporation has released the results of a national survey of school districts detailing how they’re using communications technology to engage parents and families. West, provider of SchoolMessenger solutions, has some expertise in this area as its communications products are used by tens of thousands of schools across North America.

(For full disclosure, I was the primary author of this study, as West is where I spend my days. So I could probably write this summary in my sleep. And just may have, since it’s at home where I spend my nights. Of course, I only speak for myself in this post and these summaries.)

Mobile apps are on the rise. Projecting from today’s use to their planned investment of time and resources over the next 1-3 years, districts expect a 44% increase in their emphasis on mobile apps to engage parents. Overall, mobile apps were predicted to be the “most effective and used” communications technology in 1-3 years by 53% of those surveyed, coming in right behind social media (76%) and text messaging (69%). Despite this increase and optimism, district leaders are concerned about the proliferation of communications apps that parents are asked to download.

Social media is a dominant force. Across all questions and time frames, social media was seen as a significant communications tool for schools to engage parents. Some 85% of districts use it today, 61% of district leaders find it effective today, and 76% expect it to be the most effective tool in 1-3 years. But it’s not without pitfalls, due to negative posts and constant monitoring.

Multiple channels are key to maximum parent engagement. Of districts surveyed, 65% already use five or more communications channels to engage with parents. And even though some may perceive it as an “old” technology, broadcast voice notification remains important — 65% find it effective today, and a stunning 96% use it today, making broadcast voice notification the most commonly used communications technology by respondents.

But all is not sparkling unicorns and fluffy happy bunnies. Districts report several significant obstacles to using communications tech to engage parents — and parent internet access tops the list, at 45%.

Rounding out the top five challenges: staff training and time, at 41% and 38%, respectively, then mobile app proliferation at 33%, and finally automatic language translation, cited by 26% of respondents. Interestingly, parent mobile device ownership, at 17%, was not seen as as much of an obstacle.

The report concludes the future of parent communications for better engagement is, “multi-channel, asynchronous, and parent-selectable.”

KPMG and Google have sponsored a study of online education in India that shows remarkable potential growth. The report, “Online Education in India: 2021,” appears to look at online instruction, and not edtech in general (despite a misleading news story headline).

It notes re-skilling and online certification — two adult/lifelong learning segments — are the biggest segments now, followed by primary and secondary education. But primary and secondary education are expected to surpass all other segments in size by 2021.

A research study out of the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth indicates that “clickers” — those little handheld devices that students use to respond to quizzes in class — are complicated. Complicated in that while they appear to help students learn facts, their use when the facts are disassociated from the bigger picture may get in the way of understanding the overall concept taught.

It’s worth reading the nuanced article in EdSurge. And it again shows that the “edtech good/bad” dichotomy is too simplistic. It’s not just the tool. It’s the context in which the tool is used, and how it’s used.

I sat in to co-host a GeekWire podcast on one of my favorite topics: tech in libraries. Seattle City Librarian Marcellus Turner was wonderfully open in our interview, from his take on Maker spaces and libraries (in Seattle, they’ll give instruction into how to use them, but won’t dedicate space to them due to the number of other options in the community), to his wish list for Seattle’s libraries (a library-employed “journalist,” and experimenting with 365/7/24 opening hours).

Libraries are a vital part of community education and have their own kind of edtech. I encourage you to read the article, and listen to the podcast, with the head of one of the nation’s top libraries for tech.

(Note: Yes, it’s an outdated practice as we are no longer primarily an agrarian economy. But after 16 installments, education report sources are starting to slow for the summer. So like many schools, TWIEtR too will take a summer break & reappear as reports warrant. Or when the leaves start to fall.)

Education Week continues to slice and dice the information in its fascinating survey of school administrators and teachers that pits four major tech companies (Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft) against four major education companies (Scholastic, Pearson, McGraw-Hill Education, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).

The latest? Google Chromebooks are used “more frequently in day-to-day instruction than all PC and Apple desktop and laptop computers combined.”

It’s that last phrase that is telling, that Chromebooks are used more frequently than all others combined.

Another interesting, but not surprising, tidbit: going forward, district staff plan to invest more in tablets and laptops than in desktop computers for classrooms.

Quick diversion to my day job: West Corporation (which provides SchoolMessenger communications solutions to districts) is starting to release results of a national survey that will be officially issued in a webinar and white paper on June 1.

The survey examines what communications technologies districts use to engage parents, which channels they find the most effective, and where they plan to invest their time and resources in the next one-to-three years.

Key findings are that, “school districts increasingly rely on social media, turn more to mobile apps, and, ultimately, recognize that they must use multiple communications channels. ”

Tech & Learning had a nice summary of three of the initial data points, summed up as:

86% of district leaders surveyed use social media to communicate with parents today.

65% of district leaders surveyed already use 5 or more channels to communicate with parents.

33% of district leaders surveyed plan to focus on district mobile apps in the next 1-3 years (an increase of 44% from today’s use).

A fourth initial data point — that 45% of district leaders cite parent internet access as a significant obstacle to engaging parents with communications technology.

I’ll be joined on the June 1 webinar by Elisabeth O’Bryon, PhD., co-founder and head of research of the non-profit Family Engagement Lab, which itself has done some interesting research on what families want to hear from schools, and how they hear about it.

Webinar registration is open now. And I’ll likely summarize more results here after the white paper is released.

I was reminded on May 18, 2017, where I was and what I was doing on May 18, 1980. I was interviewing for a broadcast news position in the Seattle market. I’d flown out for the weekend from my current station, WNFL Green Bay, where I was news director.

That Sunday morning, as the person interviewing me and I headed out for brunch, we heard — and felt — a muffled “boom.” We drove straight to the station, where it was confirmed that nearby Mt. St. Helens had erupted.

I immediately went to work filing reports for the local station as well as the network with which WNFL was affiliated.

Much later, after catching a red eye flight home, I walked into the newsroom and was greeting by the Green Bay station manager. “Great reports about Mt. St. Helens on the network,” he said. “What the hell were you doing in Seattle?”

Fortunately, I was offered the Seattle job. And remained on good terms with WNFL and its management. But it just goes to show that when an opportunity presents itself, it’s important to act. Even if there is both the potential of reward and risk.

Oh, and the 1980s-era photo I posted with the 140 characters on Twitter? It’s now out there, for good or ill. You can’t un-chirp a tweet.

(Note: This Week in Edtech Reports will take a Memorial Day weekend break and return, refreshed and re-snarked, in early June.)

Surveys showing that, despite all the edtech hype, classroom edtech use and tech access is showing only “incremental advances,” and how Google is crushing traditional education companies in educators’ edtech perceptions. Both this week in edtech reports.

This Week in Edtech Reports (TWIEtR) is collected from the public tweets of @FrankCatalano and succinctly expanded upon.

Project Tomorrow released another batch of results from its annual (and huge) Speak Up survey of school administrators, teachers, parents, and students. While survey respondents are self-selecting — that is, this isn’t a scientifically random or representative survey — the sheer volume of responses and how the data is weighed and sliced makes for an interesting snapshot into the state of education technology.

The latest isn’t exactly good news for those who thought more technology in the classroom would transform education practice.

Taking 38,000 teachers who responded to one Speak Up effort through January 2017, Project Tomorrow tallies how they and their students access or use technology in the classroom, and concludes the data, “indicate the lack of real systematic changes in activities, attitudes or aspirations of teachers … These are activities teachers have always done and they are very important, but they would do these regardless of technology.”

Additional good analysis is provided by Anne Wujcik, senior analyst for MDR’s EdNET Insight, who has noted these “incremental advances” over many years: “Too many teachers are using technology to do things they have always done, without rethinking the expanded possibilities technology brings to the table.”

Normally, I’d cite some of the actual data from the surveys, but the clear conclusions are more compelling, and I encourage you to review the data in both Project Tomorrow’s post and Anne’s additional analysis. There is also interesting info from administrators and students.

In a new survey released with great fanfare by EdWeek Market Brief (it’s free, but you have to fill out a form to download it), Education Week pitted four major tech companies against four major education companies. This nationally representative sample of teachers and administrators was surveyed in April.

My old stomping ground GeekWire sums up the results. Of Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft (the four tech), Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, McGraw-Hill, Pearson, and Scholastic (the four education), educators were asked which one company they’d hire to improve student achievement in their district. Google ran away with the results, at 52%. Apple was a distinct second, at 13%. Then, in third, came the first education company to rank — Scholastic — at 9%.

There is, of course, much more, including how Chromebooks and G Suite dominate classrooms. Also, of course, by Google.

Some of the most interesting analysis outside of the report itself came in my Twitter feed by those knowledgeable about edtech:

A rather light week in edtech reports. The most interesting work was a calm take down of part of an earlier study from the Electronic Frontier Foundation by a knowledgeable and respected education technology leader in the trenches.

In weeks in which there are fact-based edtech reports, This Week in Edtech Reports (TWIEtR) appears, sourced from the tweets of @FrankCatalano.

Three weeks ago I noted the alarmist tone of the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s detailed report, two years in the making, called “Spying on Students.”

Apparently I wasn’t alone. Now Jim Siegl, technology architect for Fairfax County Public Schools (VA) as well as co-chair of the group that developed the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) Privacy Toolkit, has done a detailed analysis of the EFF report.

Siegl’s dissection undermines some of the EFF’s claims by noting errors and blind spots, notably in the 152 products that EFF cited as the basis for its findings. Siegl found more than 12 percent of the products shouldn’t have been included because they aren’t used by students, are locally installed (not cloud based), or other reasons.

Siegl went on to discover that more of the products had privacy policies than EFF cites, more had encryption at log in, and more had external protections likely not considered by EFF, such as being signatory to the Student Privacy Pledge enforceable by the Federal Trade Commission.

Siegl is careful to note that his analysis is his own work and doesn’t necessarily reflect the perspective of his employer. It’s a long read. But it’s worth it for those wondering if the EFF had the definitive say on the matter. Apparently not.

I find it odd to quote myself, but my public note on Facebook and LinkedIn about the end of any status as a “contributor” or “columnist” was said best by a very slightly younger me:

“Some have noticed that I’ve again put my “Contributor/Columnist at GeekWire” status in the past. This time it’ll stick. While I’ve enjoyed (and continue to enjoy) a great relationship with GeekWire and its founders, John Cook and Todd Bishop. I haven’t been able to figure out a way forward to where I can again regularly contribute and fit in with the current direction of what is indisputably the definitive news resource for the Pacific Northwest tech industry and its workers, with a solid readership far beyond this geographic area.

“GeekWire has been patient with me as I try to figure a potential new fit, and as they try to determine where I could contribute the most (with my approach, interests, and time constraints). Despite a handful of contributions over the past two years, nothing has firmly aligned.

“Sometimes, it’s best to acknowledge the obvious. And that’s all this does. I still support GeekWire, its talented founders and staff, and hope I can be a resource for its current direction. Who knows? One day its direction may again more fully intersect with my own, and I’ll welcome that.”

Every parent will tell you: Kids will request that favorite book be read to them, or that favorite video be screened, until said parent can recite the text or dialogue from memory. (Ask me about Winnie the Pooh sometime. Actually, please don’t.)

The same obsessiveness, apparently, is true for that favorite podcast.

A fascinating new study from Kids Listen, which advocates for high-quality audio content for children, finds that not only do kids actively listen to podcasts, but they listen again, and again, and again. The survey of more than 400 families discovered that 80 percent say kids listen to a podcast episode multiple times, and 20 percent listen to a single episode more than 10 times.

Also of note — half of kids listen to a podcast every week, and one third listen to a podcast episode every day.

The full infographic has more detail. An accompanying article on the public media news site Current has Kids Listen co-founder Lindsay Patterson observing, “I recently received a handwritten letter from a mother and daughter who listen to Tumble, the science podcast for kids I produce. ‘I never stop asking about flatworms,’ the daughter wrote, referring to her favorite episode.”

A lot has been written about US and other investment in Asian edtech startups. But a detailed new analysis by EdSurge’s Tony Wan finds it’s not a one-way street: “Nearly every major U.S. edtech investor, including Fresco Capital, GSV Acceleration, Learn Capital, Owl Ventures, Reach Capital and Rethink Education, now count Asian limited partners among investors in their newest funds.”

It’s hard to say that the results of this research are a surprise. Still, the findings from a new University of Washington study are sadly consistent with anecdotal evidence.

For what tech news site GeekWire reports is the first time, the UW research shows that, “by first grade, children are already embracing the stereotype that boys are better than girls at robotics and programming.”

The good news: “At the same time, the kids believe that girls and boys are equally good or their own gender is better at math and other sciences.”

These are perceptions at age six, and may affect course and career choices. As one study author put it, getting to gender parity in tech is, “a hard problem … We won’t solve it in five or 10 years.”

This week in edtech reports, startup funding (sort of) recovers in the first quarter, the US trails several countries in K-12 learning management system adoption, and who knew there were hundreds of edtech startups in France?

TWIEtR is a free service of @FrankCatalano (as I summarize interesting fact-based reports I see every week) and can also be received by email by signing up in the left navigation.

CB Insights, known for tracking investments into various market segments, released some “oh well” news for the broad educational technology sector for the first quarter of 2017. The number of deals is up. But the total dollar value of deals continues to drop, compared to any of the preceding three quarters.

Education Week’s Market Brief, in reporting the analysis of 131 total Q1 deals for a total of $545 million, notes that more than half of the deals were made in the seed or angel stage of investment.

As Market Brief states, “The number of deals in the first quarter still falls short of the zenith of the past few years, during 2015, when 148 were struck. And the value of the deals was well short of the recent high point of $1.345 billion, also during 2015.”

More snippets continue to be released from Futuresource’s recent exhaustive (and paid) report on K-12 edtech platforms. The latest, in a blog post, has a fascinating stat: while penetration of learning management systems in US higher education is near 100%, in K-12 it’s closer to 35%.

Why is K-12 so low with growth so slow? Blame, or credit, school technology and internet infrastructure, and major publishers’ business models that still rely heavily on paper textbooks, plus a lack of a top-down approach: “US penetration falls behind other advanced markets like Canada, the UK and Scandinavia, where regional and central government initiatives have helped spur adoption.”

Kind of a neat tool to catalog edtech startups (and established firms) in France: the new EdTech Observatory. At launch, it lists 242 education technology companies, by product, customer, technology, and region. It’s fun to click around.

An article promoting its launch has appeared on several sites (looks, to my marketing eye, like placed public relations).

With hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugee kids needing to be educated, the highest percentage of offered assistance by private companies and nonprofits is funding. But an equally high percentage is for education technology — far higher than actually building schools or providing school supplies, which are more basic when technology infrastructure may not be present.

As NPR quotes a report author, “Many of these companies are based in Silicon Valley, and they do not have a very clear picture of the context they are delivering to.”

It’s a sobering reminder of the bubbles those of us in the tech industry live inside.

This week in edtech reports was a bit creepy. Two reports were released looking at the potential dark side of educational technology in terms of surveillance (student data monitoring), and bias (algorithmic personalization).

As always, TWIEtR is all about fact-based reports (surveys, research and so on) that catch my eye on Twitter and in other news feeds. Subscribing to these weekly updates by email is easy: Just enter your email address above “Notify Me” in the left navigation.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has a decided point of view about these things (you might recall they filed a federal complaint against Google in 2015 over alleged student data scanning in Google Apps for Education), released its “Spying on Students” report. Indeed, it was that December 2015 FTC complaint that began the campaign which led to this report.

The new EFF report uses charged language in this examination of data gathered by devices and software used in K-12 education (one example: “Surveillance Culture Starts in Grade School”). At the same time, it looked into privacy policies of 152 edtech services and surveyed more than 1,000 students, parents, teachers, and school administrators.

Some of the disconnects and risks, especially of “free” products that schools increasingly rely upon, are indisputable, even if the report language tends to the attention-getting.

As the EFF warns, “Student laptops and educational services are often available for a steeply reduced price, and are sometimes even free. However, they come with real costs and unresolved ethical questions. Throughout EFF’s investigation over the past two years, we have found that educational technology services often collect far more information on kids than is necessary and store this information indefinitely.”

Yes, algorithms (or sets of rules for machine problem solving and learning) power personalization. But these software-embedded instructions are created by people. And people are, well, flawed. Science-fiction fans might remember Colossus: The Forbin Project and many other cautionary tales of that be-careful-what-you-wish-for-in-tech sub-genre.

Yes, we have no flying cars or personal jet packs. But we also have no books being ground using hand-crank power to flow knowledge through wires into students’ heads.

“Back to the Future of Edtech: A Meditation” is a deeply interesting piece in EDUCAUSE Review, by Educause President and CEO John O’Brien, about how visions of the application of technology to education have changed over the decades — and what it says about us and our aspirations at the time.

There are also claims about what tech could do immediately, too. Did you know Royal’s manual portable typewriter promised to raise grades up to 38% … in 1958?

It’s a long, fun, and thoughtful read. A bonus: there are lots of pictures and video examples.

The annual Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) “K-12 IT Leadership Survey” is always a welcome snapshot into the priorities (and pain points) of district tech leadership. This year’s free report is no different.

Significantly, “mobile learning” has made it to the top of the priority list for the first time since MDR began conducting the survey on CoSN’s behalf five years ago. Conversely, a one-time top priority — “bring your own device (BYOD)” — had its lowest ranking ever.

Not surprisingly “broadband and network capacity” remains in the top three, where it (or a closely worded relative) has lived since the first report in 2013.

Common Sense Education has stepped up its privacy game over the past year, and now twice has surveyed web sites aimed at kids and schools for a very basic security measure: encryption of log-in credentials.

The latest “Login Encryption Survey” from its Privacy Initiative finds the needle has moved. Somewhat. As of March, 56% of the surveyed sites required encryption, up from 52% in October 2016. Still, 23% of sites do not support encrypted log-ins at all.

Most fascinating is the number of other states’ teachers who are required to use EngageNY resources. The report summary concludes, “Early evidence suggests that EngageNY is among the most commonly used curriculum materials for mathematics and ELA in kindergarten through twelfth grade.”

EdTech Strategies’ Doug Levin — who has long highlighted cyber security issues at schools, districts, and states — has taken his observations a step further by creating the K-12 Cyber Incident Map. It’s worth a regular visit if data security and privacy is of interest, and promises to be updated regularly. Doug’s other writing and tweets have a thoughtful policy tinge to them, and are likewise recommended.

Market research firm Futuresource has released a bit more public detail from its paid “Digital Platforms and Tools in Education” report. This time, it’s the school “enterprise communications” space that’s covered, and how classroom-to-parent communications tools are challenging district-level providers while being challenged themselves. (Disclosure: This touches on my day job, but I found it both even-handed and well-reasoned.)

Finally, I can’t quite get over this neat job market analysis from EdSurge. The edtech resource site sliced and diced its own jobs board to see what positions appeared to be the most popular from those looking to work in the edtech industry. It wasn’t sales. Perhaps owing to the large number of teachers visiting EdSurge, the top spot went to “curriculum writer.”

New Media Consortium, perhaps best known for its Horizon Reports forecasting important technology trends and challenges in K-12 and higher education, has released its third annual (skipping 2016) briefing for libraries, NMC Horizon Report: 2017 Library Edition. The free 60-page report, like its K-12 and higher ed siblings, uses a modified Delphi method that polls experts to look ahead five years.

“Library” in this context means not public, but academic and research libraries. That is, the kind you’re likely to find on college campuses.

That’s why one tech trend and one tech challenge stand out. “Patrons as Creators” is not something you normally tie to scholarly libraries, and “Improving Digital Literacy” is a general societal need. As an accompanying announcement points out, this shed lights on library professionals’ roles, “as deeper learning guides. Libraries are well-positioned to lead efforts that develop patrons’ digital citizenship and content creation skills, ensuring mastery of responsible and creative technology use.”

The concepts of parent and family engagement are, if you will, engaging topics in education technology right now. Family Engagement Lab, a new initiative and subsidiary of non-profit GreatSchools, has released a survey to help quantify the need.

In a blog post and infographic, the national survey of parents with kids ages 3 to 18 found only 68% of parents were “highly satisfied” with the information they were getting from their child’s teacher or school.

“This leaves nearly a third of families who are looking for more, better, or different information,” the researchers note. “Furthermore, we uncovered a relationship between household income and satisfaction, with higher income associated with higher levels of satisfaction, suggesting that there is additional work to be done to meet the needs of families from lower income backgrounds.”

Trying to figure out which edtech startups are on the rise? Tech news site GeekWire (full disclosure: I was a founding columnist and still am a contributor) has a useful tool, at least for startups based in the Pacific Northwest. It’s the GeekWire 200 monthly ranked index.

You can filter by category (e.g. Education) and/or B2B/B2C (e.g., All) to get to strictly edtech startups, albeit it’s “edtech” broadly defined. The rankings, based on publicly available info such as number of Twitter followers, employees on LinkedIn, and Facebook likes, can be fascinating proxies for popularity.

And one more thing:

Recalling that I wrote my #scifi stories on a TYPEWRITER. Using CARBON PAPER. Submitted by MAIL. Guess now that would be historical fiction.

This week in edtech reports has been a quiet one. It’s had me flipping through my photos of SXSWedu while I think of noteworthy non-US reports in my @FrankCatalano feed that have not yet appeared in a TWIEtR. (And robots.)

Don’t forget that subscribing to TWIEtR by email is easy if you just put an email address above “NOTIFY ME” on the left.

There has been a lot written about the dearth of venture funding for edtech startups in the U.S. in 2016. But looking just at venture investment, just K-12 — and just the U.S. — provides a partial picture.

One unexpected observation: “Education robots have been on the market for at least a decade, but the early products were very expensive and relatively primitive. That changed in the last 2-3 years with very sophisticated and relatively inexpensive robotic tutors hitting the market. Investments made to Robotic Tutor companies more than doubled in 2016 to $450 million, up from the $204 million invested in 2015 and up ten times from $45 million in 2014.”

Neither education technology nor coding as a gateway activity to computer science are purely U.S. phenomena. But some countries are better equipped than others, and those that appear not to be may surprise.

A survey by the publication WirtschaftsWoche of schools in Germany — known for its engineering prowess — found that taking computer science is mandatory in only nine of 14 German states. While that may sound pretty darned good to those of us in the U.S., the article notes that Estonia requires programming classes from the first grade, and the U.K. has mandatory computer classes for ages 5 and older.